1001 Excommunications

Readers will want to know: yesterday, Kate Kelly, the founder of a group of Mormons seeking a greater role for women in the church, was excommunicated. She received the news by email and is devastated.

She’s also, as you can see in the clip below, an articulate and intelligent woman. Given that, it’s almost hard to believe that she didn’t see what everybody else could see: however much the church might have been willing to discuss issues in private, it was not going to have the bad press of having a man with his hand held up, barring the entrance of a woman into the tabernacle, and saying, “this session is for men only.”

Kelly was doing what all of us activists in the last fifty years have been doing. Anyone out there remember the Mattachine Society? A group in the 1950’s so fearful that they formed into secret cells, they were one of the first organized groups of gay people. Yes, a generation later we derided them, painting them as Uncle Toms, wearing their Sunday best to go ask the straight o please, pretty please, be not quite so brutish. In the 80’s and 90’s, when we were staging die-ins and throwing ashes of AIDS victims on the White House lawn, it was easy to forget how oppressive the 50’s were.

The church acted as any organization would: it banished the opposition, as much for herself as for a warning to others who might—I suspect will—follow. The tragedy here is that Kelly appears truly to believe in her church, despite having, as you can hear in the clip below, “the most conflicted relationship in my life with it.”

I came upon the clip through the online version of The Salt Lake Tribune, and was curious to know: what was the editorial board of the Tribune going to do about the situation? Because this was one of those issues that every newspaper dreads: come out panning the church, and, in days, your major advertisers are pulling their ads.

I saw my father do it every day at the breakfast table: discuss what should be the editorial policy of the Wisconsin State Journal, the paper he worked for. He was on the editorial board, and with other writers would address the pressing issues of the day. So what has the Tribune done? Nothing, except for a few op-ed pieces, one of which—yes—is generally sympathetic to Kelly.

I suspected that the Tribune might be heavily connected to the Mormon Church: it would be surprising if it weren’t. What I didn’t know, however, was that in its early days, the newspaper had been anti-Mormon, and had a particular dislike for President Brigham Young, who figures high in the Mormon pantheon. Reader, this is the sort of thing you don’t want said about you:

He was illiterate and he has made frequent boast that he never saw the inside of a school house. His habit of mind was singularly illogical and his public addresses the greatest farrago of nonsense that ever was put in print. He prided himself on being a great financer, and yet all of his commercial speculations have been conspicuous failures. He was blarophant, and pretended to be in daily [communion] with the Almighty, and yet he was groveling in his ideas, and the system of religion he formulated was well nigh Satanic. — The Salt Lake Tribune, August 30, 1877       

Don’t know the word “blarophant?” Relax—it seems nobody does, including Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, an edition of which stands on the stage of the sala poética next door. Webster’s jumps from “Blarney Stone” to “blasé”….

What was interesting about the Tribune? Well, I had expected the tabs “Utah,” “World / Nation,” “Politics,” and “Justice.” Then we came to “Polygamy.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practiced polygamy (in fact, polygyny, since, guess what? Guys get more than one wife, but the women? No deal) from 1852 to 1890 when, under pressure from the United States government, it abandoned the practice. And I knew that there was a spin-off group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that their numbers were miniscule compared to those of the mainstream church. So I clicked on the polygamy tab, and read a piece titled “Bring Back our FLDS Girls,” which makes reference to an article in a Canadian paper. Right, time to check in on it.

Written by Daphne Bramham, a columnist for The Vancouver Sun, the article concerns the town of Bountiful in British Colombia; she has this to say about the community:

There is no chasm between the beliefs of the Islamist leaders of Boko Haram and the FLDS leaders. Their disregard for the value and rights of girls and women inextricably links them.

For them, girls and women are chattel. Like cattle, their only value is their breeding ability.

For them, educating girls must be stopped. Allowing it to continue might mean that some day those girls could challenge the patriarchy that enslaves them.

Strong words, but are they true?

Well, I headed to YouTube, where, sure enough, I discovered a National Geographic documentary on Bountiful, British Columbia, which you can see below. And though the FLDS church refused to cooperate, a split-off group was more than happy to. And they do a remarkable job of presenting their case: they are following a traditional way of life in accordance with their religious beliefs. And the Charter of the Canadian government –which I presume is the equivalent of the US Bill of Rights—gives them every freedom to do so.

Of course there are naysayers: the leader of the group, Winston Blackmore…wait, here’s the Vancouver Sun:

Ten of fundamentalist Mormon leader Winston Blackmore’s 22 wives were underage when he married them; three were only 15.

The former Canadian bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints admitted to it under oath, according to the transcript of his Feb. 28 deposition in Salt Lake City for a civil case involving church property.

Well, if a man has 22 wives, there’s going to be a problem—in fact, several problems. What do you do, for example, with the excess boys for whom there are no wives? The Guardian has the answer:

Up to 1,000 teenage boys have been separated from their parents and thrown out of their communities by a polygamous sect to make more young women available for older men, Utah officials claim.

Many of these "Lost Boys", some as young as 13, have simply been dumped on the side of the road in Arizona and Utah, by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), and told they will never see their families again or go to heaven.

My heart goes out to Kate Kelly, a lawyer in her thirties, who has been excommunicated from the mainstream church—a church that has repudiated the fundamentalist sect. Still, excommunication—bringing with it the loss of spending eternal life with your loved ones in heaven—must be agonizing.

But for 1000 lost boys, some as young as 13, some abandoned on the side of the road?

Ouch!

Ring! Salt Lake Speaking….

Well, you’ll be happy to know that I’m definitely having a better Monday morning than are 12 old men in—presumably—Utah*.

These guys have a problem: the world they knew went away somewhere and came back entirely different. Because, in the past, it was easy: you kept everybody busy and isolated. So if you were in small towns in the American west, you devoted forty to sixty hours to making the desert bloom—which they did—and twenty or thirty hours going to church. That didn’t leave too much time for anything else but sleep. Oh, and since everybody else around you was doing the same thing, there was no possibility of dissent.

So that meant that all of the rest of us could—in spare moments—chuckle snidely at the more preposterous claims. Who can forget Mark Twain, one of the earliest and certainly one of the best critics, on the Book of Mormon?

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason. 

So all of us could sit around and snigger when every other institution in the States had to confront its own racism throughout the sixties and seventies, but the Mormons? Still barring blacks from the priesthood, which is generally given to every male child at age 12, until 1978. And then, as Wikipedia tells us, there came a little problem named Brazil, since it was no problem telling the women from the men. But the blacks from the whites? Right—so Spencer W. Kimball, the leader of the church, went off to his study, and guess what! There God was—in all his white maleness—dishing up a revelation! Wow—all in a day’s work!

But the 70s must seem like the most halcyon of days, since the most potent threat were quaint little things like newspapers and magazines, as well as books, of course. But all of that was easy enough, since it was easy to brand any criticism as that ol’ debil, the Eastern liberal intelligentsia. Oh, and do you think a librarian in Provo, Utah, is going to be putting seditious books on her shelves? Not likely.

So change, when it came, arrived as the gentlest of mists, not as a gale. And then?

Someone invented the Internet.

Which one person described as the gateway drug out of Mormonism, ‘cause how are you going to keep them down on the farm, once they’ve clicked on Google? And there’s another problem: since all the rest of us can fritter away the time with vices like drinking and smoking, the Mormons? They’re grimly, and soberly, sitting in front of their computers, writing blogs.

Yes—it seems that the Mormons are writing blogs to such an extent that a term had to be invented: the bloggernacle. Right, my computer doesn’t know it—nor will I teach it—but Wikipedia does:

The Mormon blogosphere (often referred to as the Bloggernacle) is a segment of the blogosphere focused on Mormon issues.[1] The term "Bloggernacle" was coined by individuals within the LDS blogging community as a play on the name of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; however, not all LDS-themed bloggers like or use the name Bloggernacle, or even consider their blog to be part of it. Furthermore, not all bloggers within the Mormon blogosphere are Mormons themselves.

So on 17 March 2013, Kate Kelly, a lawyer and devout Mormon—she did her year of missionary service in Barcelona, and why does that feel ever so slightly bogus?—created a website, ordainwomen.org.

Hmmm—let’s see: who was it that said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come?

Answer—Victor Hugo….

Astonishing, really, how all the world’s media has followed this blog’s lead in championing this story! Not just people like me, but little guys like The New York Times, and Yahoo, and even way down south in Australia—anywhere, in fact, where they have Mormons (everywhere) and women (also everywhere). So yesterday, we were all sitting around scratching the collective head: some of us at home, but 200 people or so with Kelly in a vigil in Salt Lake City. Oh, and there were vigils in seventeen other countries—eighteen, if we count little Marc down here in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And why were we all vigiling?

OK—return to your seats, fasten your seat belts and lock your tray tables onto the seat in front of you: it turns out that ordainwomen.org advocates for the—deep breath, here—ordination of women! And that, to the twelve “apostles” of the Mormon Church, is apostasy, another word for which is heresy. So Kelly’s local leaders called her in for a trial yesterday.

Except not—since Kelly is now living in Utah, and had requested that the church transfer her records there.  Here’s what Kelly wrote in the first paragraph of her letter:

I beg of you not to impose any form of discipline during the trial you will hold on Sunday. I also request that you do the right thing and revoke the “informal probation” that was placed upon me and remove the “move restriction” placed on my records so that I can participate in the ward where I currently reside. Please reconsider this punitive process and allow me to continue to worship in peace.

In theory—and Salt Lake is playing this trumpet as loud as Gabriel ever did—discipline is entirely in local hands, and the central hands have nothing, nothing, to do with it.  But it is interesting that the big boys from Salt Lake had visited Kelly’s stake—the words blogging teaches you!—and then, boom! Oh, and the same thing happened to another blogger, John Dehlin. Stay tuned—his trial is next Sunday….

Well, if the French word for a bluffer is bluffeur, am I—on this issue—a scoffeur?  Because of course I know what has to be done. Tom Monson, the current president, needs to be sent to his room, in order to be served up God’s most recent revelation: the Internet, and especially Google, is the work of Satan himself, sent to snare the faithful and lead them to perdition!

Easy for me to laugh—but in one sentence, which of course I can’t find now, Kelly pleads not to be excommunicated and deprived of spending the rest of eternity without her family. Because that, you see, is what she / they / if-not-I believe. When she dies, she will—if in good standing with the church—spend all eternity with her loved ones. If not, not.

The church asked her to take down the site and sit down and be a good girl, and in her letter she makes it clear: no dice. So the trial was yesterday, and then the three judges announced—they were stumped! So they fired off an email—guys, is an electronic transmission an appropriate media to announce loss of eternal life? Shouldn’t the local bishop drop by to break the bad news? Right—the judges announced that they would sleep prayerfully on the matter, and let Kelly know in a day or two.

Why do I think there are a lot of calls to and from Salt Lake this morning?

---------------------------------

*Ever faithful to my bloggerly vocation, I calculated the total years of the twelve, and guess what? It’s 940, or almost halfway back to Jesus himself! Oh, and the average age is 78.3….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_of_the_Twelve_Apostles_%28LDS_Church%29

Two Bloggers and Twelve Old Men

OK—here’s what I hadn’t considered. First of all, the people are really nice: friendly, cheerful, and definitely hard working. Second of all, the church keeps you busy, going from meeting to prayer groups to God-knows-what-all. Remember that they had organized everybody so much that they had to declare a special night for everyone just to stay home? Also, the church takes over the smallest details of your life—even down to that famous underwear….

You’ll know by now that I’m talking about the Mormon Church, which fought like Tasmanian devils against marriage equality in California, then backed off and pretended to get more inclusive when Mitt Romney was running for president, and which now is accusing two of its members of—ah, the horror of it all!—apostasy.

Well, it’s a highly charged word in Mormon circles, since the Mormons, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists, believe in the Great Apostasy. You’ll want to know: it’s the belief that everybody and every religion was wrong from the death of Jesus to the birth of their own church.

So what have the two Mormons done to get this label thrust on them? Well, John Dehlin advocates for the rights of LGBT people within the church. Kate Kelly set up a group that advocates for the ordination of women, as well as for increasing the role of women in the church.

Both have gotten letters from their local bishops, advising them that they will be tried and face either disfellowship or excommunication. Disfellowship may take various forms, but excommunication is dire indeed: you are erased from the church as if you had never existed. And though the church doesn’t officially practice shunning, your social calendar will definitely be much lighter. Oh, and all those business contacts? You might be leaving a lot of voice mails, and getting fewer returned calls.

And so for these two, excommunication is a major, and perhaps terrifying, possibility. Consider what one writer had to say:

Mormonism is an "all or nothing" commitment, Rosen explains. "If Pandora's box is opened regarding questioning one policy or mandate, it leads to more, because it's all connected. It's not like other religions, where you can accept some parts and reject other parts. You have to accept the whole kit and caboodle. You have to accept every [church-mandated] 'calling.' You have to go to every three-hour church meeting. If I didn't go [to synagogue] for six months, the rabbi would be like, 'I am so happy to see you.' You can't do that as a Mormon."

Ready for the next paragraph?

Utah has the highest rate of clinical depression out of any state in the country, and the seventh highest suicide rate, according to a report by Thomson Healthcare. Rosen believes the LDS stance on homosexuality contributes to these statistics. One third of her patients are homosexuals who grew up LDS, and many of them were kicked out of their homes.

Well, it’s not surprising that Utah has the highest rate of depression, since wouldn’t you be depressed, attending up to thirty hours of church activities weekly, and having to smile all the time?

Right—that’s unfair, and especially wrong since Dehlin, who is straight, has taken a big risk for those of us who are LGBT. Besides his website Mormon Stories, he also has another site advocating gay marriage. And he’s finishing up his doctorate in counseling at Utah State University—not a particularly easy time to be butting the twelve elderly white male heads that run the church. But you have to admire a guy who can write, as he did in his website:

I believe in many of the central, non-distinctive moral teachings within Mormonism (e.g., love, kindness, charity, forgiveness, faith, hope), but either have serious doubts about, or no longer believe many of the fundamental LDS church truth claims (e.g., anthropomorphic God, “one true church with exclusive authority,” that the current LDS church prophet receives privileged communications from God, that The Book of Mormon and The Book of Abraham are translations, polygamy, racist teachings in the Book of Mormon, that ordinances are required for salvation, proxy work for the dead).

So on 7 June 2014, Dehlin got the letter that he must have been dreading. And the following day, Kelly got the letter as well. In her case, the trial will be this Sunday. In Dehlin’s case, it will be 29 June 14.

And while neither one could be criticized for losing some sleep over the matter, Kelly’s case seems to be particularly acute. Consider, for example, that she got a whole group of women together and tried to enter a male-only meeting on the priesthood at the tabernacle in Salt Lake City. Here are her heartbreaking words:

I suppose I didn’t realize until I was at the door and physically barred from entering the Tabernacle just how hopeful I was that we would indeed get in. I told the man who blocked us from entering, “I understand that all men, even men who are not members of the church and have no investment in Mormonism are permitted to attend. I am a returned missionary and a faithful Mormon woman and I would like to listen to the prophet in person.”

He simply said, “this session is actually for men only.”

And as difficult it is to read, it’s infinitely more painful to see the clip below.

I’ll never know—which would have been better, to be (as I am) a non-believer, or to grow up in some faith, have it enrich my life, rage against it when I came out, and then, perhaps, make my peace with it? What I do know is that believing in the church, wanting to be in the church, and then being expelled would be infinitely painful, especially in Utah.

And while I very much hope that these two courageous souls can prevail…

…I’m not putting money on it.

A middling Enemy

Well, I voted “no,” on the general belief that it has to stop somewhere—and for once I was on the winning side. But then I had to wonder—should the Satanic Temple perform a ritual on Fred Phelps ’s gave, in order to turn him into a gay man in the afterlife? Here’s Lucien Greaves on his promised Pink Mass:

The Satanic Temple exercised its own right to offensive Free Speech in our performance of the Pink Mass at Fred Phelps’s mother’s grave this past summer. After having two same-sex couples (one male, one female) engage in homoerotic activity at the gravesite, we declared Fred Phelps’s mother a post-mortem homosexual conversion. At the time, I predicted that Fred hadn’t too much longer till he would pass, and I stated –- in a direct tweet to the WBC -– that I would be presiding over Fred’s own Pink Mass before too long. As I have made a promise to a dying man, I fully intend to do my very best to see it through, and the pomp and circumstance of this Pink Mass will surely far, far exceed that of the original event in Meridian, Mississippi.

I would have said “no” to this one, too, before I saw the video clip below of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore confronting Phelps. Because it’s one thing to read about the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) and their odious “God hates fags” protests—it’s another thing to see and hear it. There, the emotion is visceral—the loathing and fear are as palpable as a slap in the gut.

As I contemplate the death of Phelps, I wonder if any good came out of Phelps’s life. He was, in fact, an admirable enemy to have—virtually impossible to like, completely absurd, outrageous. How much different than some of our other enemies!

There was Anita Bryant, for starters, who admittedly was no intellectual goliath, but who certainly had that Southern charm, as well as a megawatt smile. “I don’t hate homosexuals,” she said, or words to that effect, “I love them enough to tell them the truth….”

And we all knew what that was….

For all her wholesomeness, for all the cloy she exuded, the message was pretty bitter. At issue was Dade County, Florida, which in 1977 had approved a resolution that—grab ahold hard onto your seats, friends—prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. So what did Bryant do? She started a campaign called Save our Children, and went around the country whipping up the crowds. Want a sample of the intellectual fiber of the debate? Consider these statements, from the Wiikipedia article linked with her name, above:

"As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children" and "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters."

Bryant’s life went downhill rapidly—she divorced her husband and manager, which alienated her from her hardcore religious base. As well, she declared bankruptcy a couple of times, and her career languished.

Bryant was one thing—Falwell, another. Remember this one, immediately following the September 11^th attacks?

"Throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools," he said. "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad.

"[T]he pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America," Falwell continued, "I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

"Well, I totally concur," responded Robertson.

Then the predictable happened:

Angel Watts, a spokeswoman for Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network, said Robertson "of course" did not blame gays or atheists for the attacks.

Right—mopping up after the damage has been done.

Then there was the pope, or the Pope Emeritus, who came out and let us know that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and therefore homosexuality could never be moral. 

All of this leads us very comfortingly to the smarmiest lie of all—that these people who condemn us are condemning the sin, not the sinner. Yeah? And if I said that “Christian acts are intrinsically disordered?” Would anyone believe that I didn’t have a little grudge, a little axe to grind?

For all his extremism, Phelps may have done considerably less damage than more mainstream, less visibly crazy people. Quick—who is the president of the Mormon Church, which threw more money into California’s Proposition 8 than Phelps and the Westboro Church could ever dream of?

Will Phelps be missed?

Of course not…

Was he our worst enemy?

Absolutely not.

On Faith

I shudder to go here, because there’s no help for it—I am as unable to experience God in any of his / her various guises as a rock. And that means that I’m one of just 5% of the American population who are atheist.

Which is why I found myself watching Richard Dawkins yesterday, as I munched on a tuna fish sandwich in the café. Granted, Dawkins goes after the most extreme of the religious nuts—he tracks down Ted Haggard in Colorado, and yes, I can now tell you: it’s quite likely that the reverend was doing cocaine and call boys. Haggard, perhaps annoyed by Dawkins’s pristine Queen’s English, accuses Dawkins of intellectual arrogance.

Well, Dawkins gets around—from Colorado to the Middle East, where he interviews a Jew turned Muslim from New York. The Muslim angrily accuses Dawkins of dressing women as whores; Dawkins retorts hotly that he doesn’t dress women, they dress themselves. Not good enough for the Muslim—by allowing women to dress as whores, it’s as good as dressing them. Short version: women are chattel, to be dressed according to male dictates.

Every bush has a nut hiding underneath it, and Dawkins beats every bush. There’s the Reverend Keenan Roberts, who hit on the wonderful idea of the Hell House—a dramatic working-out of the post-life experience throughout all time of those who don’t personally accept Christ. Here’s the clip:

Oh, and here’s the description, as provided in YouTube:

Check out this "movie trailer" promo for the upcoming 2013 FIRE & THE FLAME theatrical outreach, presented by New Destiny Christian Center of Thornton, CO. This heaven and hell drama wowed audiences last year, and the spiritual impact was incredible! This year's production will feature 4 new scenes. Performances will be: Saturday, March 23 at 6pm, Sunday March 24 at 6pm, Saturday March 30 at 6pm, and Easter Sunday March 31 at 8:30am and 11am. All performances are free. A love offering will be received. Nursery available for children through 3 years of age. For more info visit www.Godestiny.org or call 303.289.1547. Senior Pastor: Keenan Roberts.   

In fact, this clip is substantially tamer than what Dawkins filmed—and Dawkins got right into it with the pastor. How old, he asks, should a child be before he is allowed to see the play—which features leaping flames and gay people groaning in agony and the devil leaping around tormenting people? And the reverend has the answer—twelve would be a good age. Dawkins protests—wouldn’t that be somewhat searing for a child’s mind? Better that, says Roberts, than growing up godless and falling into perdition.

Well, Dawkins goes through every lunatic religion and denomination—though curiously, he missed the Mormons—until at the very end, he found himself a good English Anglican, whose moderate views fell like manna in the desert.

Today, I started out watching Dawkins on the third of his series on The Age of Reason; today’s topic being the growth of “alternative medicine.” And I had just gotten to the wonderful picture of Dawkins sitting bemused and very much open-eyed as all the others in the room visualized a pearl, into which they were invited to step, and there they would find…

…their real selves!

Well, Dawkins has to find out about that, so he goes off to interview the healer, who claims to be able to alter DNA and who also informs him that most people have a double strand of DNA.

Dawkins is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, in evolutionary biology.

He was, then, very much interested in the topic—were there people who had more or less than a double strand of DNA?

The healer doesn’t miss a beat.

“The people of Atlantis had 12 strands of DNA,” she explains.

Predictably, Dawkins goes nuts.

Dawkins thinks that reason and science are under attack, and is out to challenge all religions—on the grounds that they promote irrational thought as well as divisions.

I’m both more extreme and less extreme. Though I cannot feel God, there are people who can, and who struggle as hard as they can to live up to beliefs that are truly admirable. And these people, acting together as a community, can accomplish what I—a solitary atheist—cannot. And these people adopt a theology that is both liberating and challenging—one that could help the world, if it ever got adopted.

My friend Susan, in fact, is one such person, and sent me a clip of another such person: John Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop. Right—if I could hear God, I would hang with Spong, and his flock. Check out a clip of a remarkable man:



I said that I was both less and more extreme than Dawkins. Why? Because for every man like Spong, there are men like Scott Lively, the evangelical who has exported homophobia to Uganda and Russia. This is a level of hypocrisy and hatred that even Dawkins doesn’t contemplate. And according to Wikipedia, Evangelical Protestants make up 19% of the American population. The mainstream protestants? 15%.

So I’m on the fence. In general, I cannot enter churches, and the smell of burnt-out candles is particularly upsetting to me—I associate the smell with the end of services at Christ Presbyterian Church. I dislike seeing crosses anywhere, and especially around people’s necks. And nuns—of which we have a full convent in Old San Juan? Don’t ask….

But before I throw out the bathwater, I’d like to see if somehow, somewhere, there might be a baby….

A Tectonic Shift in the Mormon Church?

So, question of the day: is the Church of Latter Day Saints really changing?

You may know them as an easy group to hate: the Mormons. And yes, we can all laugh at their protective underwear, their beliefs that Joe Smith actually found the tablets in Palmyra, New York, (think that was where), their history of polygamy. They do, however, some things very well. They work damn hard and did make the desert bloom; they respond quickly in natural disasters; they take care of their own.

And their church is their lifeline. They are, in a sense, still living out that trek from New York to Nauvoo, Illinois, (another “think that was where”) to Salt Lake City. Yes, they have arrived, they have made a home, but they haven’t stopped clinging to one another; the desert mentality of each member being crucial in the survival of everybody still lives in their psyche. For others, church is church; for Mormons, church is their life.

Which is what made it such a compelling story in movies, plays, and fiction. There was Joe Pitt in Angels in America, there was the movie Latter Days, and now, there is an upcoming documentary about a Mormon family with a thirteen-year old gay son. And predictably, Mom goes through shock and disbelief and questioning and ends, finally, at some kind of acceptance.

Well, that seemed like something interesting, especially since the mother had gone door to door in California in 2008 campaigning for Proposition 8. And speaking of which, was there any truth to the belief that the church was backing off “defending” traditional marriage?

Having spent 45 minutes on the church’s new website, I can tell you—it’s a definite maybe. Mormons and Gays dot Org is the name, and yes, I’d call it Gays and Mormons, but that’s a quibble. And the church is quite clear in where it stands:

The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.   

In the Catholic Church, which teaches the same thing, this is called the “you can be a bird, but you can’t fly” doctrine. And the site bangs the drum on love, listen, have compassion, have hope, let’s have a dialogue. Just no screwing.

So then I had to listen to the Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Twelve Apostles on “What needs to change.” Oh, and prepare yourself for a jolt—the Elder is:

1.     white

2.     elder and elderly

3.     male

Hey—if you need to lie down to absorb that, it’s perfectly fine.

He looks, in fact, like the worst combination of a mix between my old high school principal and Ike Eisenhower. And his message? Here it is:

Same gender attraction presents many issues and questions in society at large. These include what causes it, whether it is subject to change in kind or degree, and whether, or the extent of which, laws like marriage should accommodate it. Our discussion is limited to two related questions we sometimes hear in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What does our doctrine teach us about how family members and church members should treat one another when one of their members is struggling with some of these issues, and how can we help members of the church who struggle with same-gender attractions, but want to remain active and fully engaged in the church?

This same topic was discussed with all of the general authorities of the church in April of 2012. We will not discuss any of the multitude of other issues and questions. There is so much we don’t understand about this subject, that we’d do well to stay close to what we know from the revealed word of God. What we do know is that the doctrine of the church, that sexual activity should only occur between a man and a woman who are married, has not changed and is not changing. But what is changing and what needs to change is to help our own members and families understand how to deal with same gender attraction.

The church, you see, got slammed over Proposition 8; the public relations were a disaster. What had seemed like a conservative but hardworking group ended up looking like spoilers and haters. And their efforts weren’t inconsiderable: Mother Jones magazine states that at the height of the Proposition 8 campaign, there were 77 people working full time on the issue in Salt Lake City. Oh, and they kicked in 20 million bucks on it, too.

Right, now on to Ty’s story, from the video posted on the website:

Well, it wasn’t an issue for him in high school, because he still had to do his year of missionary work. But after he got home, it was time to get married, start a family. And why was it that he didn‘t want to get close, physically, to any of these girls? Was he gay? He began dating men.

He goes through several spiritual crises, always ended up with a huge and wonderful revelation: God is love. Be with Him, stay in the church, let Him into your life. He keeps struggling and struggling and decides to ask the question, being prepared not to receive a question. And the question? Is there a family in his future? Must he go alone through life alone?

Know where this is going?

We see pictures of his wife; we see pictures of their home; lastly, we see pictures of their adorable baby boy.

You’ll know my reaction. The picture I saw was of a church that had put one of its children through years of unnecessary, almost capricious, spiritual hell. And that through the message of Ty’s story—and he’s utterly sincere, by the way—will put a lot of other gay people through the same ringer.

The Huffington Post reported that the church is making connections, reaching out, rethinking. “There’s been a tectonic shift somewhere,” a church member says. The money—always a good barometer for measuring the social pressure—for defeating marriage equality bills is drying up.

I grew up in a time when homosexuality was illegal, when cops were raiding gay bars, when it was routine to talk trash about fags and queers. I now deliver food periodically to my husband’s mother; she strolls into the plaza and reads names for me. The world has changed. I understand Ty’s longing to have a family, I came to realize how much I had missed only recently, when I saw Raf’s nephew matter-of-factly dawdle his daughter on his knee. I stole away and bawled for the children I’d never known.

I chose a husband and no kids over a wife and kids. But I think all of us—the Catholic and Mormon churches as well—need to get here: you can have a husband and kids.

US News | Weird News | More ABC News Videos

Still a Lot to Do

Somewhere in Puerto Rico, there’s an unhappy and confused twelve-year old girl.

In the grand scheme of affairs, that’s not too bad. Atrocious things are happening all over the world to kids—famine, abuse, displacement. The little girl, whose name no one knows, has two good parents, both professionals, and presumably all the comforts of the upper middle class. In short, she’s well-off, a nice kid living with her two parents who are…

…lesbians.

Ho-hum, you say, and what’s the big deal here?

Well, the mother who is not the biological mother would like to adopt her daughter. In short, she wants to be legally recognized as a mother. And the Puerto Rico Supreme Court has just said, in a 5 / 4 decision, no.

So what, you say. The couple has been together for 25 years, they planned the child together, the I-don’t-want-to-say unnatural mother was the first face the child saw when she was born. No one’s going anywhere….

Yeah? Do we know that? What if the birth mother (don’t know if that’s a term, but it is now) gets hit by a bus tomorrow? Does the Family Department have the right to come in and take the child and assign her to foster care?

There’s also something called divorce, in which case the non-birth mother would be out in the cold. A father could argue for every other weekend and two weeks in the summer, but the non-birth mother? She’d better hope for a good judge.

Predictably, the decision fell on political lines. Our former governor, who was / is a poster boy for the GOP (and implemented the same strategies two years before Scott Walker of Wisconsin) was rumored to be Opus Dei. There were, according to some, prayers—and by no means ecumenical—before meetings. So all of his appointees have dictated the fate of this mothered / motherless child.

The scene is looking potentially better in Washington, where the Supreme Court will begin deliberating on the Proposition 8 decision on March 26. As you remember, the citizens of California—funded liberally by the Mormons—voted against marriage equality in 2008. The decision was challenged, and eventually a federal district court ruled that the citizens didn’t have the right to determine who gets married and who doesn’t. Now, the Supreme Court is going to decide it.

In addition, the Defense of Marriage Act—signed into law by that devoted family man, that upholder of traditional values, that pillar of moral and sexual rectitude Bill Clinton—is up for deliberation by the Supreme Court. Curiously, the court is hearing the DOMA case one day after the Proposition 8 case.

It’s been a long road, this battle for the rights of LGBT folks. So long that it’s a little hard to see how much progress we’ve made in so—relatively—little time. I was born in the worst decade of the twentieth century, perhaps, for gay people—a decade where Joe McCarthy was flaunting a list of “homosexuals” employed by the government, which by executive order made it illegal to be gay and work in the federal government. Gay bashing was not speaking ill of gay people—it was literally assault on men leaving the bars at night. Families routinely invaded houses that two men and women had made homes for years after one partner died—and the legal battles weren’t easy or pretty.

So we’ve done a lot. There’s a reason so many fundamentalists are going crazy: they’re seeing their world vanish.

A lot, yes.

But still so much to do….

Two Phelps and a Geek

Some days it’s a challenge, a daily blog. Is anybody reading? Is it worth it? And what to write about, today?

It happened, though, that Mr. Fernández announced the topic last night at the computer.

“Wow—two of Phelps’s kids have left the church!”

“WHAT!”

“Yeah, and they’ve issued an apology and been excommunicated or whatever from the church.”

OK, if you’re gay or Jewish or Chinese or even just sane, you do what I did: click off the iPad Sudoku and pop over to the computer. No, not because of any tendency of Mr. Fernández to lie—there’s just some stuff you’ve got to see.

For the benefit of anybody who’s been living in a salt mine for the last twenty years, the “Reverend” Phelps has been traveling the country for the last two decades protesting at fallen soldiers’ funerals, since God hates fags, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are God’s revenge or curse on the United States for being Godless and endorsing homosexuality.

This, practicing the understating for which I am famed, raised eyebrows of all of America and a good part of the world.  

They certainly practice no discrimination in who they hate. Actually, I’ll do it the opposite way, since compiling the hate list would wear the skin off my fingers. Here, then, is the one group they love.

The Phelps family!

Who make up the Westboro Baptist Church, which carries surprising weight for a congregation of forty (most named—guess what—Phelps! One thinks of Mark Twain, out in Utah, discovering that nine of ten Mormons were named Smith….) Well, if you stand outside a Matt Shepard’s funeral with a sign like the one below, you’ll get attention.

So much attention, in fact, that a British filmmaker, making a documentary, titled his work “The Most Hated Family in America.”

And one not unfamiliar with courtrooms. In fact, they sailed into the biggest court in the nation—you know, the one in Washington DC with the big steps—and came out an 8 to 1 victor. Oh, and Chief Justice Roberts wrote the decision favoring Phelps, saying that sure, it wasn’t pretty, but Phelps had every right to stand outside the funeral of Matthew A. Snyder and hold up signs like the one above. The father, feeling that the funeral had been trashed—gee, so many people with thin skins!—had taken Phelps to court.

Alito, the one dissenter, wrote:

Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter, said Snyder wanted only to "bury his son in peace". Instead, Alito said, the protesters "brutally attacked" Matthew Snyder to attract public attention." Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case," he said.  (Note—gotta give some money to Wikipedia….)

Well, you know where I weigh in, of course. Look closely at the photo, and you’ll see the little child’s head beaming out against the American flag. And I think that’s child abuse—warping and twisting a loving child into a hate and attention-oops-that’s notoriety-seeking maniac.

But—steering hard here back to the head of the post—the two daughters of Phelps say no. Here’s what one of the wrote in her blog, medium.com:

We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.

Gonna have to think about that. As are the two sisters, Megan and Grace, who, according to The Guardian, are in hiding—at least nobody knows where they are.

I think of them, “trying to figure it out,” as they write in their blog, as they love the family that has cut them off, as they ponder the hurt and pain they have caused so many victims of their “well-intentioned” family. Nobody knows where they are, maybe even they themselves.

I know where I am—in front of my computer with my husband twenty feet away. I’m writing for my blog that from time to time addresses LGBT issues. On National Coming Out Day, I came out to my brother, who was slightly puzzled. I explained—having come out to everyone years ago, I had decided to start the whole over again.

I also know where Keith Orr is—somewhere in Ann Arbor, Michigan—probably working at his bookstore / café. And Keith was the guy who first thought up the most effective way of dealing with the Phelps family. Quick on his feet, Keith heard that his business was going to be picketed on 17 Feb 2001. Instead of a counter demonstration—which just gives Phelps more publicity—Keith sent off an email, asking people to spread the word and join the campaign.

Campaign?

Yup—donate what you can for every minute that the Phelps family pickets the café. The money—over 6000 dollars—went to the Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project, and yes, Sharp Reader, it’s exactly what you think.

Oh, and where was Keith? Inside with the hundred people of so who had donated, and who were having a party and counting minutes.

A curious thing—Keith inside with a hundred people, the Phelps outside with four adults and two small children. February in Michigan can be many things, but warm it is almost never. They were standing alone outside in freezing cold weather, their feet cold and wet, the wind whipping snow into their faces.

They had a message of hate; they were alone and isolated. Keith was warm, at a party, surrounded by support and love.

And Grace and Megan—one of whom ran the website godhatesfags.com—where are they now?

Cut off from their family. Alone, confused, wondering what they’ve done, and perhaps afraid.

Time for confession. I call him Keith, but he’s not. Not to me, or the handful of characters who made up a musical clique at West High in the 70’s.

Great work, Geek!